On Thursday, Charles Krauthammer appeared on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, and explained that the removal of Trump from office for anything other than “high crimes” would “cause a rupture in the country.”
CARLSON: He’s been in office — 9 months since he got elected. From the very first day, people were saying, “We’re gonna take him out.” Now this investigation looks like it has the potential to do that. If that were to happen, some of these voters may conclude that they’re not really allowed to pick their own president.
KRAUTHAMMER: Well, that’s why I think we are really headed into very choppy and dangerous constitutional waters. We know what the Democrats want to do. They want to get control of the House, and on day one, they’re gonna start impeachment. Now, I happen to think — as you now, I opposed the Trump candidacy. I don’t think he’s very well fit for the presidency. But fitness is not a reason for impeachment and removal. High crimes are. Here we have a prosecutor looking for high crimes. With Watergate, you started with a crime, and then you [tried] to find out how it happened. Here, they’re looking for a crime. Perhaps they’ll find one, I don’t know. As of yet, I haven’t heard of one. Collusion is unseemly, but it ain’t a crime.
So you’ve got a political establishment — mostly Democratic, but there are some Republicans who would like to see him taken out of office. I think that would be a catastrophic mistake. It would cause a rupture in the country where people would say, “When we people, the ones who’ve been abandoned, elect somebody we like, our guy gets taken out? I thought we had a stable democracy.” Again, I think he’s unfit, but that’s not grounds for removal.
If you think a man is unfit, you vote against him — but you don’t remove him from office. And that’s where I’m afraid we are headed given the forces that are surrounding the president. I just hope that cooler heads prevail.